DIAGNOSTICS IN DISASSEMBLY UNSCREWING OPERATIONS

Disassembly for recycling purposes is an emerging area of research tha t offers many advantages over more traditional means of recycling. How ever, many technical challenges are involved in automated disassembly. This paper addresses one of the critical challenges involved: diagnos tics in the unscrewing operation. The various conditions that can aris e when one attempts to unscrew a screw tone of which is the successful removal of the screw) are categorized, and a diagnostic procedure for detecting which condition has occurred and deciding what subsequent a ction to take is developed. Experimental condition detection results a re presented.